22 March 2011

SHARE Conference is a new kind of festival created by the State of Exit Foundation. For the first time in the region, a host of internationally acclaimed internet and social activism experts, new media artists and renowned musicians will be present in one place at the same time. The festival has two main program units: the innovatie SHARE by Day education platform and intensive SHARE by Night with Tuborg parties. Belgrade will thus become the hot spot for sharing knowledge, ideas and fun at performances, lectures, workshops and exhibitions featuring representatives from Google, Harvard, MIT, Obama's marketing team and the likes. Dom Omladine with its 3 halls is the festival's main venue, and another 8 clubs will host around 700 regional opinion-makers, as well as 15,000 local and international visitors. A single wristband will grant access to more than 100 events of the festival.

Just as we found out there will be no Dis-Patch festival in Belgrade from this year on, which is quite sad news, we got ourselves some kind of substitute in form of SHARE Conference. While it may not be as revolutionary and new as their advertising team suggests, it certainly bring quite a few big names into the game - Carl Craig, Murcof, Alex Smoke, Tricky, Josh Wink and MJ Cole, to name a few. It's just something that small independent festival like Dis-Patch wouldn't be able to handle, possibly due to lack of financial support that otherwise stands behind EXIT team, who runs this show.

Everything is on a whole different level now. So are the entry fees. Which is quite understandable, but still not easily affordable.

I got myself a lucky way in, though. There was a small competition that required from producers and sound designers to create an under-10-seconds "sound logo" for the conference. One of mine got into the selected few, so I will receive the wristband which allows me to be there day and night.